


The Alpha & The Amnesiac

by ThatOtherGirl13



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: (as in: sex out of physical need), Alpha Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Bottom Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Hurt/Comfort, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, Memory Loss, Mildly Dubious Consent, Miscarriage, Mpreg, Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Whump, Omega Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Protective Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Top Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Warning: tags contain spoilers!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:08:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27963551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatOtherGirl13/pseuds/ThatOtherGirl13
Summary: Dr. Kozak’s experiments leave Nicky with amnesia and in heat.OR: A combination of two tropes: Memory loss + Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics(tags contain spoilers!)
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 60
Kudos: 321





	1. Chapter 1

Joe gasps. Whether he’s just awakened or revived, he doesn’t know. The first realization that hits him, is that his body is restrained and that his skin prickles with cold. He searches around himself for the calm of ocean blue eyes, ignoring the retreat of the doctor he had the displeasure of meeting before.

His Nicky is to his right, but is refusing to meet his gaze. His husband is stripped down to his pants and boots and tied to an examination table, much like Joe. His breaths are quick and panicked. His hands are clenched into fists. The scent of his distress hangs in the air, thick enough for Joe to taste. Thick enough to make him nauseous as he is powerless to do anything about their predicament.

Their dynamics have never been as simple as “protective Alpha” and “meek Omega”. In nine hundred years, Nicky has proven to be very capable of protecting himself and his family. But in nine hundred years, now and again, they do find themselves in situations like this; situations that bring out Joe’s baser instincts. He’s tense with the need to wrap his arms around his Omega and shield him from cold and pain and judgment.

A futile struggle against his bonds is soon abandoned in favor of calling out to Nicky – who seems to be ignoring him, more than anything.

“Darling,” He tries, with a tone as soothing as he can muster, when usually they’d be joking around with each other to help keep each other calm. The way they had been joking on the airplane. “I call dibs on the doc. You can have the big guy.” The big guy being the security guy that could barely take his eyes off Nicky the entire flight. He had probably never met a male Omega before in his life and he was much too interested for Joe’s liking.

Nicky cocks his head to the side to look at him. His mouth tight. His lips furrowed. In his eyes there is no calm, no kindness, no love, no… familiarity.

Joe gasps again. “Nicky?”

His husband breaks their eye contact in favor of letting his gaze dart to his restraints, to the table with samples and medical equipment, to the heartrate monitor, to the bright light fixtures overhead. Everything adds to his fear. His breathing becomes irregular. He sucks in too little air too fast.

Joe grits his teeth and yanks against the nylon restraints hard enough for the coarse edges to cut into his skin. The wounds heal before the hurt even registers, he is too preoccupied with his need to reassure Nicky. He slips into an old dialect that has become intimate to them – with them possibly being the only two people left alive who can speak it fluently. “My love, my all, it’ll be okay.”

They must have shot him in the head, or perhaps even cut into his brain for another goddamn sample, Joe thinks to himself. They have experience with head wounds causing amnesia, although he’s never known it to last this long or to be this severe. Usually, they at least still recognize each other and it takes only a minute for the brain to start firing normally and for the memories to catch up to the present.

Perhaps the drugs they were injected with inhibits their healing in some way.

There is an IV in Nicky’s arm. Joe glances down at his own arms but he is not being administered any drugs.

_What are they doing? Isn’t this all supposed to be about their immortality?_

Nicky squeezes his eyes shut and forces himself to take calming breaths through his nose.

Joe picks up on muffled voices. Kozak is talking to Merrick and Copley in an adjoining room. Their voices bounce off the walls and echo around the laboratory, allowing him to catch snippets of their conversation.

“You have what you need. Blood and tissue samples. You don’t need them anymore.”

It surprises Joe that the traitor is advocating for their release. Merrick’s response is, at first, nothing but a condescending chuckle. “You’re familiar with the concept of proprietary data, aren’t you? We can’t just let them go and have then walk into our competitor’s labs.”

“Not to mention,” Kozak chimes in, too eagerly, “as immortals they are the perfect test subjects for a variety of experiments. I’m putting them to good use.”

“What the fuck…” Joe mutters to himself and he tries his bonds again, against better judgment. “Nicky, don’t worry. Andy is going to get us. Andy, Book, and Nile. These fucks, won’t know what hit them.”

Finally, Nicky responds to him, speaking in that old dialect: “Be quiet, barbarian! I must pray.”

_Barbarian?_

_Pray?_

Nicky hasn’t prayed in eight hundred years and hasn’t called him a barbarian for even longer than that. He eyes the IV as if it would spontaneously pop out of he just glares intensely enough. Whatever drugs they are putting into his body – whatever “experiment” Kozak is conducting – it has to be what is responsible for his memory loss.

This is not his Nicky, lying next to him, so close but so painfully out of reach. This is Nicolò from before his first death. The naive Omega who was sick from suppressants so he could pass as a beta and fight in the crusades to be absolved of sin. This is the Nicolò who loathes Joe with a passion.

This is the Nicolò Joe isn’t particularly fond of either.

Still, recognizing that this is 1099 Nicolò in a 2020 laboratory, makes Joe’s heart ache with sympathy. He must be terrified of all that surrounds him, including Joe.

He watches his husband mumble to himself in rushed Latin. If the old habit of praying offers him some comfort in this alien environment, Joe isn’t going to interrupt him. He studies their surroundings instead, noting escape routes and potential weapons, getting ready for then the time would come.

Joe has faith in something much more tangible than Nicolò.

Nicolò has faith in his God, whereas Joe has faith in their family.

He knows Andy and Booker will come for them and he has faith their new family member will come as well. Nile will make a good addition to the team. As a Beta, she is good to have around, to provide some balance to the pack, which consists of Alpha’s exclusively, with the exception of Nicky. His husband would be the first to admit that dealing with three Alpha’s in a pack is exhausting at times.

How much time passes as he waits for their rescue, is impossible to tell. There are no windows in the lab and the lights are a constant – no, _relentless_ brightness. Kozak hasn’t come back for them. Nobody has. Joe assumes she’s off somewhere studying their tissue samples under a microscope, as if that would do her any good.

Nicky – Nicolò – still prays. That is no indication of time either. When they first met, the crusader could pray for the better part of a day; a dedication ingrained in him during his time spent studying at the monastery. His first attempt to get away from the life of an Omega was devote himself to the church. The only man he’d been willing to serve was the Lord.

Joe himself was not the best at keeping track of the minutes either. His awareness of time had slipped away from him over the past nine hundred years. Time had little meaning to an immortal. He could lose himself to drawing, training, meditating, or simply appreciating his husband.

So somewhere between a few minutes and a few hours later – that is the best he can manage – it hits him. Somewhere between one breath and the next.

He inhales deeply. Greedily. His lips part, as if exposing his tongue to the air will let him taste it.

His reveling makes way for fear as the dire reality registers.

Normally this scent that surrounds him would bring him joy and anticipation. Now his stomach feels heavy with dread.

Joe twists his head to the side, in time to see Nicky wet his lips. The pink tongue that darts out demands all of Joe’s attention for longer than it should. He steels himself, as only a 900 year old Alpha can. And only thanks to 900 years’ worth of practice can he keep his rage at bay and hidden from his vulnerable Omega.

He may have lost track of time, but Joe is sure they hadn’t been here for a _week_. Which means that Nicky’s heat is early. Nicky’s heat is never early. It has been perfectly synced up with Joe’s rut since their first mating. They had done the math before agreeing to take the mission in Sudan. The onset shouldn’t have started for another week, which would have given them enough time for the mission and allowing them some leeway for fucking-up and needing to run – and boy did they need that leeway – and then separate from the group to be alone together as they should be.

His gaze is drawn to the IV again. _What kind of concoction is in there? And what was the purpose of it?_

The air ripens with Nicky’s pheromones. In a matter of days, he would be in full-blown heat. If the drugs didn’t accelerate the pre-heat as well…

A line on Nicky’s monitor spikes, startling them both with an accompanying beeping.

The beeping goes on and on, making it difficult for Joe to stay calm. Sensing the rising panic in his husband, doesn’t make it easy for Joe to stay in control of his emotions. Every beep feels like a prod, a physical taunt, and it gets worse and worse and worse…

A door to the left opens and Kozak hastens into the lab, her eyes too wide and excited for Joe’s liking.

She completely ignores him, bypassing the table he is strapped to, to get to his husband. After a single glance at the monitor, she turns off the beeping.

“How long do his pre-heats typically last?” She asks Joe with an inhuman detachment, all the while not taking her studious eyes off his husband, who shrinks under her stare.

“You won’t live that long.”

The corners of her mouth quirk up in a grin at the barely-veiled death threat. “I’m guessing we still have some time to kill then.”

He does not like her tone. He watches her make notes on a tablet and adjust the drip of the IV. Then she leaves, without paying them any more attention than she would a pair of lab rats.

Nicky writhes, as much as he can, being restrained. His eyes are screwed shut and his mouth moves as he whispers his prayers, but they seem to offer him no comfort now.

A pang of pain in Joe’s heart makes him speak up. He has to at least try to put his Omega at ease. “It will be okay, my love,” He says. Even though there is no reason to suspect Nicky will recognize him now, even though the drip of the IV seems to have been lowered.

Nicky ignores him, only the tightening of his mouth indicates he has even heard him.

“It will be okay,” He repeats. Even though he is starting to lose faith.

_Andy, what’s taking you so long?_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to everyone for reading the first chapter! I hope you will enjoy this second part!

When Andy comes, it’s not as Joe expected. Or hoped.

It’s not guns blazing.

No explosion as “the signal”.

She is led into the laboratory by armed guards, with her hands tied behind her back. Three steps into the space, she doubles over in pain. The front of her shirt is red and wet with blood – a recent wound that she hasn’t healed off yet.

He considers it all to be a distraction tactic until a second pair of guards come in, escorting Booker. Booker looks unharmed and yet, somehow, in a worse than Andy. His defeat is crippling. His big body seems to have shrunk from it. He doesn’t meet Joe’s questioning gaze. He looks down at his boots instead, as he more or less stumbles through the room, guided by the guards to an examination table on the far right.

Andy is shoved onto the table next to Nicky’s.

Nicky watches it all with wide and frightful eyes. The scent of the two new Alpha’s being introduced to the clinical air sets him even more on edge. Joe too.

Andy they have more or less grown used to having around in the centuries between losing Quynh and finding Booker. Before they lost Quynh to the sea, Nicolò and Yusuf always went somewhere private, leaving the two women alone. They couldn’t leave Andy alone after tragedy had struck. They didn’t spend their heats in more privacy then a room on the other side of a safe house. Andy was in control herself, being as old as she was.

Booker is different. Booker is young.

Joe trusts Booker like the brother he is, but on an instinctual level he cannot stand the thought of this other Alpha being around his Omega in pre-heat. Since Booker joined their pack, Joe and Nicky started secluding themselves again during heats, as it proved to be necessary. Oftentimes spending it on Malta.

Joe’s unease worsens when that one security guard enters the lab, trailed by Kozak and Merrick.

Keane.

His scent is a stench. Pungent and suffocating. Booker is a delicate bouquet in comparison.

Joe can only imagine the effects it has on Nicky.

All the other guards are Beta’s and this does not surprise Joe. The security team is essentially a pack in and of itself and Keane does not seem like the kind of Alpha who can tolerate being around other Alpha’s.

Keane comes to stand at the foot of the “bed” Nicky occupies. When he puts his greedy hands on his husband’s ankles, Joe snarls. He gets a grin from the man in return.

Without breaking eye-contact, Joe grunts in ancient Greek Andy had taught him: “Andy, we don’t have much time…”

The guards tighten the nylon straps around her arms and limbs. Joe can hear her take a deep breath to scent the air, to smell Nicky’s pheromones among everything else. In plain English she grumbles: “Fuck, yeah, I know…”

“They’re giving him some sort of drug. It triggered his pre-heat and seems to be causing amnesia.” He tears his gaze away from Keane to look past his husband’s heaving chest at Andy. Her face is screwed tightly in pain. Kozak comes to her bedside and lifts her shirt. She blocks Joe’s view, but Andy’s hiss alarms him.

“She’ll need stitches,” Is Kozak’s conclusion.

“What? Andy, what’s going on?” His heart starts to race and the monitor he is hooked up on picks up on it and beeps in rhythm with it.

“It’s my fault,” Booker says miserably from the other end of the room. “I did this.”

“Shut up, Booker,” Andy barks, then slips into French. “This is not the time.”

“Boss.”

“Shut up.”

Joe presses his lips into a taut line. It wouldn’t be the first time Booker has gotten them into trouble. As the youngest of the group, even at over two hundred years old, he is reckless and more prone to making mistakes. There is an… inelegance to his actions, something the rest of them have long outgrown. Still, he is not usually this apparently guilty in the face of his screw-ups.

He is about to ask what is going on – why could Andy possible be in need of stitches – when he gets distracted.

Nicky kicks his legs as much as he can to get Keane’s hands off him, but the man tightens his hold on him.

“Get your hands off him, you animal,” Joe seethes.

He doesn’t. It makes Joe’s blood boil.

Finally, it seems Booker’s senses have come to him enough to be able to notice anything other than his own self-pity. After a telling silence he lets out: “Oh _merde_.”

“That’s why I said this is not the time. The situation is already fucked up enough.” Andy winces when Kozak starts to stitch her up.

“Don’t let her die,” Merrick says.

Joe’s heart leaps into his throat. _Die?_ “Andy?” He rears his head off the padding of the examination table to be able to see past the arch of Nicky’s Roman nose and make eye-contact with their leader. Her eyes are a depth of pain, as deep as the sea. Now, she’s drowning too.

 _No._ Joe knows what this look means. This apologetic, wrecked expression on her usually proud features.

She is mortal.

He sucks in a breath but still feels like he is suffocating.

The curly-haired little beta continues: “She’ll be very useful in isolating what it is that makes them immortal. What do the others have that she no longer does. None of your little side-projects, dr. Kozak. You have the other three for that.” With that warning he walks off, followed by Keane.

The security guard pauses in the door and turns back to address the doctor. “You’ll call me when I’m needed?”

“Yes. His pre-heat will probably last two or three more days though.”

He smirks and locks eyes with Joe. “Can’t wait.”

It’s too much. It is all too much. His demeanor of calm cracks and rage oozes out like scorching lava from the earth.

He thrashes his body, powerfully enough to share the entire examination table and for bruises and cuts to appear where he is being strapped down. He screams in agony and frustration until he finds the only words that are left to find. “You son of a bitch!”

The door shuts behind Keane with a hiss.

“Motherfucker!” Joe screams after him at the top of his lungs.

He hasn’t felt this hopeless in centuries as the terrible reality dawns on him.

Kozak is going to have Keane try to mate with Nicky.

Andy is going to die – in a span of time they would otherwise refer to as “soon”.

“Joe, stop!” Andy orders. “You’re not helping!”

He realizes Andy is right. He needs to stay calm, for Nicky. Nicolò might not remember any of their time together, but as a mated pair, he will naturally being influenced by Joe’s anger and distress and in turn will be more calm when Joe is calm.

He forces himself to take deep breaths, the way Andy had taught him centuries ago. He is not as in control of himself as she is of her own emotions, but he’s had some practice. When he trusts his voice to be soothing and soft again, rather than a growl, he says in Ligurian: “Nicolò, that man will not touch you, I swear to you. I will not let him take you from me.”

“As if I want to be yours!” Nicolò shouts in return with a visceral honesty.

It’s like being stabbed in the heart by him all over again. Joe has to remind himself that this is not his Nicky. This is a Nicolò from the past. A Nicolò who doesn’t know him, let alone trust him, or love him.

Still, it’s a wound that hurts more than anything else.

He glares at the back of Kozak’s head. She works to stitch up Andy, she suffers it with little more than an occasional wince as she’s not even given an anesthetic.

“Why are you doing this?” He asks her. “What’s the point of all of this?”

“To understand and to better mankind.”

“No, the immortality is what Merrick is after. Why are _you_ doing _this_ to Nicky?”

“Oh.” She puts her instruments on a stainless steel table with a hollow clang and pauses to tape a bandage to Andy’s abdomen. She turns to him and strips off her gloves. “To settle the scientific debate of psychology versus physiology of the Alpha-Omega bond.” Her answer sounds almost bored, certainly dispassionate.

He frowns at her and it prompts her to elaborate.

“Once mated, the bond between an Alpha and an Omega is permanent. But, much like the nature vs nurture debate when it comes to many human traits, there is no evidence to support either a physiological or psychological root of this bond. Is the bond unbreakable because the Omega is, biologically, no longer receptive to the pheromones of another Alpha? Or is the bond unbreakable because the Omega is emotionally rendered unavailable?”

Andy scoffs. “So you’ve fucked with his memory to see if you can re-bond him?”

“I’d phrase it differently in my research paper, but: yes.” She idles by Nicky’s side. Noting the stats on the monitor – the slow increase of his body temperature and heart rate. “If Keane is able to make a bond, I can finally put this debate to rest.”

“You’re going to let an Alpha rape an Omega so you can prove a point?” Andy challenges. Joe is beyond words.

“It’s science.”

“It’s inhumane. We’ve come across ‘doctors’ like you before…”

Kozak looks unbothered. She tosses the gloves into a trash bin and leaves.

Joe’s body vibrates with anger, but digging his fingernails into his palms as he clenches his fists helps him stay calm; it gives him something to focus on, a sharp point of focus to keep his thoughts from getting dragged into a darkness where they’ve been before. In his mind there is a well full of horrific memories that he does not wish to relive, but they only have one hope left.

Not the millennia old warrior, lethally skilled beyond comprehension.

Not the 200 year old soldier, succeeding through persistence and brute strength.

Not themselves, a pair of 900 year old combatants, constant and reliable like the moon and the sun.

No, their only hope was a twenty-something year old Marine, still afraid of her own immortality.

“I’m sorry, Joe,” Andy starts in ancient Greek, a language lost to time, but one she taught Joe and Nicky to speak for the sport of it. Not even Booker was fluent. “She’s not coming.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.” Her voice is grim. “She left. She left before Book and I tried to get Copley. She’s gone back to her family. As far as she knows, we’re successfully blowing our way out of this hell-hole by now.”

He shifts his gaze to his husband as something terrible claws into his own chest, ripping at everything faster than it can heal.

Nicky is still desperately holding on to shreds of priestly serenity. His jaw is clenched and he grinds his teeth. His fingernails scratch at the padding of the armrest. His feet move as he must be curling his toes inside his boots. He is so afraid. He’s more afraid than Joe can even remember ever seeing him, it’s been so long. His Nicky has grown to be so brave, braver than any Alpha Joe had ever met, Andy being the only exception. No, maybe not even Andy. Andy’s bravery is amplified by her carelessness, her Devil-may-care attitude. Nicky has displayed true bravery in situations where it had failed everyone else in the pack.

But now he is a young, frightened Omega. He may not have understood the conversation that went on, but even with the language barrier, Keane’s interest was unmistakable. 

The smallest whimper escapes the Omega and Joe dies his most painful death yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading :) I will try to keep up with quick updates!  
> Feedback helps combat crippling self-doubt!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay! I blame life. 
> 
> But: happy new year! Let's hope 2021 makes up for the bullshit 2020 threw at us.

Normally, Andy would be devising an escape plan, bouncing ideas off the rest of them, harkening back a ’36, a ’22, an ’88. Sometimes in the nineteen hundreds, sometimes long before then.

But she is quiet now. A quiet despair that last befell her when they had to give up their search for Quynh. Joe had never seen it before and he had never seen it since.

It is eerie. It doesn’t help that he needs her to be their leader now more than ever. Even when contending with two male Alpha’s, she has always been the leader of the pack.

But he can’t fault her. She’s dealing with something grave that they all will one day – they just never know when: mortality.

Joe wants to temporarily step into the role of their leader, but he is in no state for calm and rational thought. All of his sense are assaulted with an acute awareness of Nicky and the state he is in. The smell of his pheromones flooding the laboratory, the sound of his stifled mewls and the labored, slightly panicked breaths through his nose, the sight of the rosy hued flush that spread across his bare chest.

All of it will trigger Joe’s rut.

Just like it will trigger Booker’s.

Joe’s skin crawls with a jealousy and protectiveness and it’s not even truly Booker he needs to worry about. Booker is restrained as well as they all are. It's that security guard Keane that poses the real threat.

Nicolò appears remarkably calm, to anyone other than Joe. He knows that if he were to put his ear to his chest he would be able to hear his rabbiting heartbeat and he would feel the trembles coursing through his body and if he would stop refusing to look at him, Joe would recognize the turmoil in his eyes, like the Mediterranean sea reflecting a stormy sky.

The Omega keeps his eyes squeezed shut, just like his mouth. His lips are taut. Joe’s gaze trails down to his pants and notes he doesn’t have an erection yet, but judging by the smell and the imperceptible but restless shift of his hips indicates he soon will. A telltale sign that he is going through his pre-heat faster than usual. Normally it would last three or four days, but at this rate he’ll be in the full throes of his heat come tomorrow.

The mysterious medicine continues to drip into his veins.

“Andy, please, talk to him. He might listen to you.”

“When has he ever-?” Andy starts to ask, so absorbed in her own grief – in the knowledge that now she will not live long enough to ever see Quynh again, she has apparently forgotten about Nicky’s memory loss.

“Frankly? Because you’re white,” He spits and it pains him to say it. Nicky is the most unprejudiced, most accepting and loving person he has ever known in his long life, but it wasn’t always like that. He can’t fault him for it. Growing up sheltered and indoctrinated with a fear of “others”, being told scary bedtime stories about the barbarian Alpha’s of the Middle East that pillage villages to kill and rape and enslave Omega’s… Stories that weren’t any more true than any other misgivings about the world. Yet back then there were countless people who would never set foot on a boat for fear of the Kraken or sailing off the edge of the world. People never knew any better than what they were told.

Nicoló didn’t know any better back then.

Andy doesn’t respond with anything more than a sigh. She was never the best talker out of the four of them – or even out of the five of them. No, that has always been Nicky. He is always the one who knew what to say and how to make people feel better.

His frustration at the helplessness of the situation is about the reach a new high when the deep voice of Booker vibrates in the air.

He speaks in halted Ligurian, as best as he can. Nicky had been teaching him the language during sleepless nights.

“Nicolò, I will not tell you not to fear,” He says, his tone calm and even. “You have every right to be afraid and we all understand. But I will tell you that you must not lose faith. You can trust us to protect you.”

Nicky turns his head to face him. His breathing evens out and his fists unclench. He is responding well to the other Alpha, causing Joe another unfair wave of jealousy. All he ought to be feeling was grateful; grateful that Booker’s are provided comfort. But it is just so wrong for another Alpha to soothe his Omega.

A dull explosion silences the French soldier and all four of them tense up. Glass beakers rattle on metal shelves and one of the surgical tools on the tray between Nicky and Andy rolls all the way to the edge. It is the only sound to fill the laboratory for a long stretch of time.

Then a muffled scream.

Gunfire.

Booker deadpans: “She has your style, boss.”

“You think it’s Nile?” Andy sounds more hopeful than she has in centuries.

A door to his left bursts open, but it isn’t Nile. It’s Kozak. She looks distressed as she hurries into the lab, eyeing the four of them on her way to a desk by the other door, where she hunches over her computer and clicks the mouse frantically. She must be securing the medical data. She flinches at the sound of more gunshots but is undeterred.

Joe closes his eyes, focusing on the sounds he hears beyond the door, getting closer and closer. Adrenaline starts to pump through his body anew.

The door beeps and then opens and Nile – a sight for sore eyes – stumbles into the lab.

Kozak spins around with impressive speed, having brandished a syringe. Booker calls out Nile’s name. She manages to close the door just before more gunfire sounds and it locks behind her. In a split second, Kozak is on her, but she is no match for the Marine. She evades the stab of the syringe and jabs her in her ribcage with her elbow, causing the doctor to gasp for breath and fall to the ground. Nile has her gun trained at her head and it looks like she is about to execute her and Joe would not mourn the loss, but in a swift move she points the gun to the left and then pulls the trigger.

Kozak screams as the bullet tears through her calf. She clutches her leg, dropping the syringe in favor of applying pressure to the wound.

Nile kicks the syringe away from her and doesn’t pause before starting towards the four of them. Her gaze flits from one immortal to the next. She frowns a little when she looks at Nicky. Even though she doesn’t know him well at all, she can tell instantly that he isn’t himself, as he has witnessed the situation with wide eyes.

She stands between Booker and Andy and unclasps Andy’s restrains first.

“I thought you were going back to your family.”

“You are my family now,” She replies, steadfast.

“You barely even know us,” Andy counters.

“And you barely knew me, yet you came to save me.” She flicks her gaze to Nicky, “And fed me and comforted me.”

“We’re a pretty fucked up family.” Andy glances at Booker and Joe doesn’t know why she singles him out.

“Which family isn’t?” She forces on a grin. “Come on. Let’s get out of there.” Nile frees Booker, while Andy gets up from the table and walks around Nicky’s to unbuckle the straps holding Joe down. She knows he would want to be the one to free Nicky.

He nods at her in thanks and shoots up from the table and towards his love.

Cold eyes look up at him. Normally, Nicky’s eyes are like the Mediterranean sea, but now they are like the cold depths of a stormy ocean in which they had all nearly drowned as they searched for Quynh.

“Please trust me,” He begs. “I would never hurt you.” He takes out the IV firt, being as gentle as possible. Then he leans over him, mindful not to touch the bare skin of his chest and he undoes the straps tying down his right arm first. The cold eyes study him as he moves back to free his left arm as well.

There is a scraping sound of metal on metal, lightning fast movement, and Andy calling out Joe’s name, but it is all happening too quickly for it to register; for his brain to recognize the danger. Because his brain had stopped associating Nicky with danger a long time ago.

The sharp pain in his shoulder startles him enough to leave him gasping for air. He looks at the surgical blade jammed into shoulder, just above his clavicle and the hand of the man he loves still wrapped around the handle, digging it in deeper and twisting it and then pulling it out.

Joe staggers backward. Blood gushes out of the wound. He has hit an artery. With fuzzy vision he sees Nicky slip out from under the last of his restraints, holding up the blade defensively as Nile and Booker corner him.

He reaches his hands behind himself to steady himself against the table he had been strapped to moments before. Andy appears beside him and slowly helps him down onto the floor.

A sense of cold floodshim, like jumping into a frozen lake – something he had done far too often in his many centuries. He is going to die. Andy presses her hand onto his shoulder, holding the wound closed and wringing a cry out of him. Stopping the bleeding might allow his healing abilities to take care of the wound quickly enough so he would die.

Reviving is never easy.

And it is time-consuming.

All Joe can say – whisper, really –is: “Don’t hurt him. Don’t hurt him. Please…” He can hear Nile and Booker struggle with Nicky, but he can’t see them, his line of sight blocked by the table Nicky occupied before.

“It’s ok, Joe, don’t worry.”

The burning pain alerts him to the fact that his body is stitching together the open wound. Severe blood loss is difficult to recover from though. He will feel weak and queasy for a while, he knows, as their bodies take relatively long to generate a new volume of blood. But at least he can breathe again and a warmth starts in his chest and spreads out until he can feel his fingers and toes again.

“I’m good,” He grunts.

With Andy’s help he is able to scramble back up to his feet.

What he sees made him feel hot with rage.

Booker has his arms wrapped around Nicky’s naked torso and he holds him tightly to his chest. He is talking to him, trying to calm him down, while Nicky is still doing his best to free himself and even attempts to head-butt him. Booker readjusts his hands on the pale skin and squeezes him tighter still. His scent fills the room, the kind of scent an Alpha releases to calm an Omega.

No, not _an_ Omega. _Their_ Omega.

Nicky responds. But not just because biology dictates it. Even as young Nicolò, he was always too strong-willed for that. He _chooses_ to trust Booker.

It is like being stabbed all over again.

“Let him go,” Joe snarls.

Both men look at him. Nicky’s eyes widen at seeing the man he had stabbed standing upright again. The wound he had inflicted should have been fatal. If not for Booker holding him up, the Italian man might have fallen to the floor. All color drains from his face. He mutters “impossible” and “witchcraft” and “devilry”, which Joe remembers hearing him say a lot in the early days of them trying to come to terms with their immortal fate.

Now that Nicky is no longer struggling in Booker’s grasp, the French man’s hold on him is less functional and more… gratuitous. As is the way he presses his nose into the side of his neck, Where Joe knows Nicky’s smell to be the sweetest and the strongest.

“Let go of him, Booker.” His voice dips low. This is going to be the soldier’s final warning.

Booker snaps his head up. In the packs pecking order, Joe outranks him. Still there is a moment of defiance in his eyes before he reluctantly opens his arms and lets go of the Omega. He takes a step back and scrubs his face with his hands.

Nicky stumbles forward but catches himself on the bed. “What is this? What is going on? Where am I?” His voice gets more panicked with each question.

Joe’s heart clenches. “Why isn’t he remembering?” The IV has been out for a while. Long enough for Joe to fully heal the wound in his shoulder. It should have been enough time for Nicky’s body to dispel whatever “medicine” they had injected him with.

The only conclusion, frightening as it is, is that the IV was not the cause of his memory loss and that leaves a mystery on how to cure it.

“Guys, I’m sorry, I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but whatever it is, we don’t have time for it. We gotta go,” Nile urges them.

“She’s right,” Andy agrees and she stalks over to the doctor and hoists her up to her feet while the woman wails in agony. “We’ll take ‘the doctor’ here with us. Whatever she did, she can undo it.”

Kozak spits: “I’m not doing shit for you.”

It earns her a ruthless punch in the gut from Andy.

Joe grabs their shirts from a table nearby and holds Nicky’s shirt out to him, hoping to gain his trust. He knows how uncomfortable his Omega must feel, standing there half naked, under the scrutiny of Alpha’s, whilst already – and alarmingly – far into his pre-heat.

He accepts it warily and dresses himself.

Joe puts on his own shirt, which feels awful as the fabric sticks to the blood that is drying on his skin.

“Nile, check the computer. We’ll need those medical files as well,” Andy instructs. “In case this bitch doesn’t talk.”

Nile nods and bends herself over the computer with a studious and determined expression.

“Nicolò,” Joe tries, approaching him like he would a wild horse back in the day. “We will explain everything when we are safe, alright? I promise, we will answer all the questions you have.”

Nicky stared him down.

“Help us get to safety,” He says. Because even though Nicolò as he stands before him isn’t as skilled at the 900 year old warrior he is supposed to be, he is still a very capable fighter. Although he can’t risk giving him a weapon, he’s seen the Omega kill Alpha’s twice his size with his bare hands. Nicolò had always said that the fact that Alpha’s routinely underestimate him, had worked out in his advantage more often than not.

Andy distributes the guns that Nile had collected on her way through the building and she gives Joe the only assault rifle. She has an extra handgun, which she holds out to him as well, leaving it up to him whether to arm Nicky. Joe tucks the gun into the back of jeans. Nicky wouldn’t be much good with the gun anyway, being only experienced in grappling and sword fighting.

“There’s nothing here,” Nile says.

“What?”

“There’s nothing here. All the folders are empty. She dumped the files.”

Andy groans. “Fine, we’ll just have to work hard to get the truth out of her. Let’s go.”

Andy, Nile, and Booker move to the door and all three look over their shoulder at once.

Joe looks at Nicky, his eyes pleading. “Trust us.”

Nicky stares unblinking for a long time, but finally he nods.

They form a single file. Nile is first, she insists, considering Andy’s new mortality. Booker is charged with holding onto Kozak. Nicky is between Booker and Joe, who is the last in line.

The group makes their way out of the lab and through the hall. They encounter a number of soldiers whom they overpower easily enough.

They can’t risk going after Merrick with Nicky being as vulnerable as he is, so their objective is to leave. They will come back and deal with Merrick and Keane at a later time.

Keane, however, has other plans.

They are making a beeline towards the elevator when something gets tossed around the corner.

_A grenade?_

Before they can even respond, there is a bang and a flash, but instead of all of them being turned into a fine mist of blood and tissue, the hallway starts to fill up with smoke. It’s thick and suffocating and has them all coughing in seconds. The gas burned their eyes as well. Tears are streaming down Joe’s face in reaction to the gas. He can’t see anything.

Instinctively, he reaches out for Nicky. The man is doubled over in a coughing fit and doesn’t even respond to the touch.

“Over here, follow me,” Nile calls with strained voice.

They followed the sound of her voice down another hallway and through a set of doors, where they can breathe again.

Booker is carrying Kozak at this point, as the woman can barely walk on her injured leg.

They barely have time to catch their breath when the room is stormed by armed men on both sides. Joe stays close to Nicky. Using his body to block him, firing his weapon with deadly accuracy. A bullet tears through his bicep and behind him he hears a gasp. He fires two rounds at the armed guard coming towards him and the man falls to the ground like a rag doll.

When Joe turns around he sees that the bullet that grazed his arm, pierced Nicky’s chest and red blooms on his shirt.

“No… nononono…” He rushes to him and catches him before he falls. Nicolò weakly resists him, not wanting to be held by the “barbarian”, but he doesn’t have the strength to fight for long. In a matter of seconds he lets out a final breath and goes limp in Joe’s lap, his head falling backwards.

_He is going to be ok_ , he tells himself. Even as he feels new, hot tears sting his eyes.

“Fuck. Fuck. No, stay with us. No, come on…” Andy pleads off in a corner, barely getting Joe’s attention as he holds his dead husband and waits for him to revive.

“Boss, she’s dead.”

“Shit,” Nile chimes in.

Only when they accept that Kozak has perished in the firefight, do they realize what has happened to Nicky.

Joe can’t even think about the consequences of losing Kozak and how much more difficult that is going to make it to get Nicky’s memory back. All he can worry about right now is his husband coming back to him, in any way.

A hand lands on his shoulder and it’s Nile. She crouches down by him and he can’t help the sad smile that tugs at the corner of his mouth. She is truly a great addition to the family, he thinks to himself and it is somewhat bittersweet to realize: Nicky will love having her around.

Will he, though? If his memories are lost for good, it’ll probably take him a while to learn that all the distrust in the dark-skinned people that he has been taught, was based on vicious lies.

He pets his hand through the sandy-blonde hair.

Nicky hasn’t been gone for more than half a minute when his body goes rigid and a vein in his neck swells with the tension. Then he suddenly sucks in a breath and his eyes fly open. They find Joe’s face and confusion makes way for fear. He shoots upright and claws at the front of his shirt which is wet and warm with his own blood. He looks down at the circular hole, to the left of his sternum and pokes his finger through it to find the mended skin.

In a panic he scrambles up to his feet. “What have you done to me?” He demands to know.

“Nothing.”

“What have done to me?” He repeats, his voice cracking. He looks betrayed and in utter anguish. His hand is fisted into the front of his shirt and it trembles visibly.

He gets up from the floor. “It’s ok, my love-“

“I’m not your love!”

“Please… You know it to be true. You can smell it on us both; we belong to each other.”

“You must have raped me.”

The accusation makes Joe physically ill. “Don’t- Don’t ever say that, I beg of you, Nicolò. Don’t say something like that about what we have.”

“Joe, we need to go.”

He nods in response to Andy. “Nicky- Nicolò, please. Just come with us. We will answer all your questions.” His is far too distraught to effectively calm him Omega through scent, but the repeat of this promise seems to convince Nicky.

They fight their way back to the elevator and use their bodies to shield Andy from gunfire. Joe even swears Nicky purposefully steps between Andy and an armed guard to take a bullet for her, understanding that she is the only one of the five of them who can’t heal.

He catches sight of Keane at the end of the hallway, right as the elevator doors close. The man and two of the accompanying guards take aim and fire, but only one bullet gets in between the doors as they close and misses the five escapees.

They had fired back as much as they could, but Keane had ducked around the corner.

The elevator moves with a jolt and Nicky seeks purchase against the wall. His breathing quickens but before the claustrophobia and the alien material of stainless steel surrounding him, can fully take effect, the doors open again, with an almost humorously out-of-place ding.

Two final guards by the door are dealt with swiftly.

Outside, they have to physically pull Nicky along and into the car that Copley had apparently left there for them, as he was overwhelmed by the sight of the skyscrapers towering over them.

The three men cram into the backseat of the car and Joe fights not to take it personally that Nicky would rather lean closer to Booker than him. Andy is in the driver’s seat and she peels the car away from the curb just as the first police cars round the corner and approach the building.

It infuriates Joe that Keane and Merrick were left unharmed, but he knew he would have his revenge eventually.

“Where to, boss?” He asks, more as a distraction than genuine interest in knowing where they were fleeing to.

“I don’t know yet, I have to think,” Was Andy’s reply.

“Why? What about the Foxtrot safe house? That’s, what? Only a six hour drive from here.”

“We can’t trust any of the safe houses. They’re blown.”

“Blown? All of them? How is that even-?"

“Copley,” Andy interjects.

Nile turns her head to driver sharply. “ _Copley?_ ” Then she shoots a look over her shoulder.

“Yeah. Copley. He found all of the safe houses. Or at least, that’s what we have to assume. Since he was able to find the one in Goussainville.”

“Right. Yeah…” Nile’s frown deepens and the two women share a lok, the meaning of which is completely lost on Joe.

He can’t be bothered to try and figure out the root of the awkward exchange. All he can worry about is Nicky, his Omega, on the brink of his heat but not feeling safe around Joe.

And them all having no safe place to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that Nicky is a bit of dick at times. It's all behavior and prejudice he's been taught and has since unlearned, but obviously he's back in that mindset now. He will unlearn it again quickly, don't worry.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry it took me this long!

The air in the car is stifling and the atmosphere even more so.

Nicky rubs his knees together, aware of and self-conscious of the fact that his pheromones are getting stronger and eliciting reactions from the two Alpha’s he’s sandwiched between.

Booker is anxiously jittering his leg. He has a hand over his mouth and is staring out the window, which he rolled down a little bit.

Joe’s skin prickles all over. He feels feverish. It’s the onset of his rut, in response to Nicky’s heat. He’s a little behind, judging by how he’s feeling and how Nicky is smelling. He has followed Nicky into his every heat for almost a millennium; twice a year. It should be titillating, not terrifying. But uncertainty shrouds everything in a thick black fog and there is no joy to be found.

Even though they didn’t trust Copley not to have blown every single one of the safe houses they have accumulated over the centuries, Andy and Nile decide that they can trust him to find a new one.

Joe can’t even be bothered to ask them too many questions. He trusts Andy and is happy to let her make the decisions, as he has been for all of his immortal life.

They go to the former CIA operative, not risking a call or text message that might be traced. The two women leave the three men in the vehicle as they go into Copley’s house. They aren’t inside for more than twenty minutes, but it feels like an eternity.

“I need to get out, I need some air,” Booker announces gruffly after a minute or so and he pops the door open and hurries out.

Fresh air rushes in and Joe suggests to Nicky that they get out as well. Nicky shakes his head.

Although Joe wants to stay with him, he recognizes, with pain in his heart, that his presence is of no comfort to the displaced Omega, so he decides instead that Nicky might feel safer being alone in the car for a little while. He urges Nicky to relax for a moment and then gets out of the car, softly shutting the door behind him, as Booker slamming the door shut earlier had made his love flinch.

He takes a few deep breaths. Copley’s house is located in the country side and they are parked on a back road between a patch of forest and a paddock where two stocky work horses graze. A farm in the distance is the nearest building.

Booker is pacing back and forth, with his hands on his hips. Joe studies him and notes the younger immortal is avoiding eye contact. His complexion is paper white and he keeps puffing out his cheeks as he releases deep breaths, like he’s trying to control a strong sense of nausea.

Calming Booker isn’t his main concern, but he _can_ comfort him a little, it might make Joe feel a little less useless, at least. “It’s ok, Book. I’m sorry for snarling at you, earlier. I know you would never…” He waves his hand through the air and leaves the sentence unfinished. He can’t bring himself to say it. Booker is also heading into his rut. It’s the first time in nearly two hundred years that his body has responded this way to Nicky. After it had happened the first time and a much younger Booker hadn’t been able to refrain himself from overstepping boundaries, Nicky had ended up killing him in self-defense.

And as soon as he had revived, Joe had killed him once more for punishment.

After that, they had always made sure that the couple had their privacy during Nicky’s heat.

“I’m so sorry Joe. I can’t- I can’t control it.”

“I know. But I trust you.” He did. He is two hundred years older now and wiser. While he can’t keep himself from going into rut, Joe has to believe that he can keep his hands to himself, if they can remove as much temptation as possible.

A grimace appears on Bookers face and he keeps pacing and redirects his gaze to his feet again.

Joe is sympathetic to his struggle and the man must feel betrayed by his own body. Booker isn’t interested in Nicky this way, he has a pronounced preference for females and over the centuries has even shown to prefer the company of Beta’s over Omega’s.

He knows they need a safe place where they can get some distance from each other. Joe and Nicky can’t seclude themselves from the rest like they normally would. After such a catastrophic failure of a mission, they need to stay together for protection. But they were at least going to need one separate bedroom.

With a lock on it.

Just in case.

“What do you think of this Copley guy?” Joe wonders, whilst shooting a look through the rear window of the silver sedan, eying the back of Nicky’s head.

Bookers halts and it takes a heartbeat before he shrugs.

“First we trust him. Then we don’t. Now we trust him again?”

“He made a mistake, when he turned on us.” Booker’s sorrowful eyes find Joe’s. “He won’t do it again.” He spoke solemnly.

Joe nods. Nile had vouched for him in the car, said the former CIA operative had been willing to sacrifice his life to extract them from Merrick’s lab. And Joe knows that they can’t be picky when it comes to choosing their allies. They can use all the help they can get. Not only to find a safe house, but also to find help for Nicky.

He straightens up when the two women walk back to them, trailed by Copley.

“Mister Al-Kaysani,” Copley starts, a few steps away from him. “I am deeply regretful of what has been done to you.”

Joe clenches his fists. He remembers being led out of the armored truck and seeing Copley waiting by Merrick’s private jet. That same fury and betrayal he had felt in that moment returns to him. It pours into him, fills him up to his throat. “I don’t care all that much about what was done to me.” He nods to the car, where the love of his life still waits. “I care what has been done to him.”

“I will do everything in my power to make this right.”

“And what kind of power is that?”

“Well, first of, I have a safe house for you. It’s completely off the books. I may have done business with Merrick, but I have kept many secrets from him and this safe house is one of them.”

“And he’s coming with us,” Andy declares. “So we can keep an eye on him.”

With that, the group splits up. Nile and Andy go with Copley in his Range Rover and Joe and Booker climb back into the sedan. Joe lets Booker drive, so he can sit in the back with Nicky.

If anything, Nicky seems grateful that there is a little more distance between them now. He presses himself up against the door and stares at the window. He keeps his knees pressed together and has his hands tucked between his thighs. His body language is more overt than Joe has seen it in centuries. He’s gotten very skilled at reading his lover, but Nicky wasn’t an open book to any one else.

It is odd seeing him this way. On one hand so open, yet on the other hand so closed off. It’s apparent how vulnerable he feels and there is one thing that has never wavered over the centuries: Nicky resent feeling vulnerable.

The two cars drive North for hours, beyond Perth in Scotland and finally exit the highway at a town called Pitlochry, where they stop briefly for some shopping, letting Copley inform them on what they needed – food mostly, but also blankets and clothes.

They get jostled in the car as the roads deteriorate the further they go and soon enough they reach the definition of the middle of nowhere. The “road” they are following is more a path, one that is hardly ever used. It doesn’t have a name. They haven’t passed any homes or buildings or any other signs of civilization for two hours when they come up on a large cottage.

“Wait in the car,” Joe tells Nicky and then he and Book get out with their guns drawn, mirroring Andy and Nile. They tow Copley along as they scour the premises. It’s not just empty, it’s been long abandoned. The garden is overgrown and they barely manage to pry the front door open which is wedged shut in the doorframe. Inside, everything is covered in tarps and those tarps are covered in dust.

“My past with the CIA always made my wife nervous,” Copley starts to explain unprompted. “So, when I retired, we retreated to this place. The edge of the world, my wife called it. You have to drive thirty minutes West to get cellphone service. We didn’t live here for very long. We had to move to London for her treatments.”

“Nobody knows about it?” Andy asks.

“My wife’s father and brother. They helped me build this place. But as far as they know, I sold it.”

“You built it yourself?” Nile was impressed. But she’s young, so she’s easily impressed.

Joe remembers some of the houses he and Nicky had built together in their first few centuries together.

They were much better.

“It’s only two bedrooms, but as you can see, the living room is large, people can sleep on the couches as well. One of the bedrooms has an ensuite bathroom, the other bathroom is just down that hall. I’ll flip the breakers in the shed and then we’ll have electricity. Merrick won’t be able to track you here. Even if Keane guesses that you came for me for help, there’s years’ worth of a fake trail for him to follow first, during which he would trigger my digital safety net. We’ll find them before they’ll find us.”

Andy concludes it to be good enough and Joe goes back outside to retrieve Nicky and start shuttling in their supplies.

He has a small heart attack when the side door of the sedan is wide open and the car is empty. “Nicky? _Nicolò_?” Before he can berate himself for leaving him unattended and not even considering him to be a flight risk, he spots him through a line of trees, seated in a patch of grass.

Joe approaches him with caution, making sure to make plenty of noise as he gets closer, so Nicky isn’t caught off guard.

The man’s shoulders tense up when he fixes his gazes on him.

“How are you doing?”

Nicky studies him, searching for falsehood in his kind and patient tone. “I had to get out of the…-“ He makes a confused gesture towards the car.

“The car?”

“Yes. I had to get out. The smell was… too much.” His cheeks flush red and he can’t maintain eye contact any longer. It is this stubborn bashfulness that is in part to blame for Joe falling head over heels in love with this man nearly a millennium ago.

“Ok. But how are you doing?” He pressed on gently and he smiled when Nicky snapped his head up to look at him again.

“I’m-… None of this is making any sense to me.”

Joe lowered himself down into the grass, sitting cross-legged across from him, at an appropriate distance.

“I should be dead,” Nicky continues. “I _was_ dead. But… I’m not anymore. And I don’t know how. And I’m-… I’m mated… and I don’t know how. I don’t know _you_.”

He nods but puts on a smile and formally introduces himself: “My name is Ysusuf Al-Kaysani,” He says, trying to ignore how strange it is to say that to a man who should know everything about him. “But nowadays everyone calls me Joe.”

“How can you explain that I don’t know the name of my own mate?”

“You’re suffering from memory loss. You’re missing over nine hundred years’ worth of memories.” Joe recognizes how preposterous that sounds. He hates that his husband had to suffer another death, but he realizes it’s the only thing that makes what he’s saying sound even remotely plausible.

Nicky swallows. “Nine… _hundred_ years?” His expression is openly baffled until it must dawn on him that it was the only explanation for why the world and the people in it look so different from how he remembers and instantly an acceptance and resignation is visible in the set of his shoulders.

He sucks in a breath and when he releases it, it comes out trembling. “How come we don’t die?”

Joe shrugs. “I have no answer to that. None of us can explain it. It just happens one day.”

“And when was that?”

“The first time you died – the first time we both died – it was 1099. It is now the year 2020.”

He nods as if he understand, although he couldn’t possibly.

“We met outside of Jerusalem. Do you remember going there?”

Now he shakes his head.

“What is the last thing you remember?”

“Being in the monastery and men coming to get me to mate me off to someone.”

“That’s the night you fled.”

He looks at him sharply. “How do you know that?”

“You told me,” He says simply. “You’ve told me everything about your life from before we met. You didn’t want to be mated, which is why you joined the monastery to begin with and when they came for you anyway at your father’s decree, you fled and joined the army. You… you didn’t plan on surviving. You would rather die than become someone’s Omega. You were afraid it would change you, make you a slave.”

“So why am I now yours? How can you explain that, aside from you having forced yourself on me.”

He presses his lips into a taut line. Over the course of their time together, many Alpha’s had tried to take advantage of Nicky, tried to make him theirs against his will, and every single one of those memories makes him sick. To be accused of being like those despicable Alpha’s isn’t something Joe can stomach. “I didn’t want to be mated either, for a long time. I, too, was afraid it would change me. I didn’t want to become one of those aggressive, abusive Alpha’s. I’ve seen it happen, even to good men. We were both afraid of being bonded. But our love grew stronger than our fear and in the end, it didn’t change us. You’re still stubborn as a mule and in charge more often than not. And I’m- I’m jealous and protective at times, sure, sometimes even overprotective. But when it comes to you, I have no bark and I have no bite.”

Nicky mulls over his answer in silence and averts his gaze. He combs his fingers through the grass. The wind plays with his hair and with his scent. “How is it possible that I’ve forgotten all this time?”

His heart sinks. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t have a lot of answers,” He spits. “You promised me answers.”

“I’m giving you all the answers I have.” He scoots closer but stops himself when Nicky reels back and he can tell that if he would move another inch, the man would get up to distance himself from him. “We’ll figure it out though. We’ll figure out what is causing this amnesia and we will fix it.”

“And until then?”

“Until then, I’ll take care of you, in any way you need.”

Nicky quirks an eyebrow at that. “I don’t need you, in any way.”

“Ni-Nicolò, you are about to go into your heat.”

“So? I’ve suffered through my heat without ‘needing any _care_ ’ many times.”

Yes, Joe remembers the stories of how the priests at the monastery would lock him up in the basement, where his scent and cries wouldn’t reach anyone. And they had been together romantically for seven years before they were both ready to commit to being immortal mates.

Nicky had always been proud of being able to suffer them without help and it was quite a feat, most Omega’s would have given in to the biological urge to mate long before Nicky eventually did. But… “I know how strong you are, Nicolò. But the heats you remember going through, are from when you were unmated. You’re not unmated anymore. Your body knows there is a mate available to it and it will…” He pauses to search for the right word, “ _compel_ you to give in to this instinct.” More like: torture you until you can’t stand it anymore. But he doesn’t say that.

Only twice did Nicky have to suffer through his heat alone after they had become a bonded pair. On those two occasions, a mission had gotten in the way and they had been separated at the worst of times. When he first laid eyes on his love again after, his heart had broken. The man had been completely wrecked, but still forced on a smile for Joe. The first time he had been with Andromache and the second time with Quynh. The women had kept him safe, but could not help him through it any way. It wasn’t until long after that first time, that Nicky opened up about how bad it had gotten.

The longer the body is denied what it needs, the worse it gets. The ache in his hips and lower back evolved into sharp stabs of pains, relentless for days. The fever got worse and worse, until he was delirious with it. The arousal was constant and there was no relief. After three days he had tried hurting himself to counter it; had cut himself and hit himself, until Andy – and the next time Quynh - had caught what he was doing and had to restrain him. He had begged them both to kill him, just for the moment of respite, but they had both refused, knowing it would only put everything on pause, it wouldn’t shorten his suffering.

Normally, a heat, when the Omega is properly cared for, last three or four days. The body responds to getting what it needs. Without Joe around to help him, it had lasted seven days once and ten the other time – and it might have lasted even longer if they hadn’t been reunited on the eighth day and Joe could help him through it.

Seeing his husband in such agony was the worst of Joe’s memories and he dreaded having to stand by and watch him go through that again and listen to his wails and his pleas for it to be over.

“Nicky,” He says, too distraught to remember that that name sounds alien to the man sitting across from him, “please believe me when I tell you how bad it gets. You don’t have to go through that, I can help.”

“I can handle it,” He says adamantly and he gets up from the grass and walks towards the cottage, ending their conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, I was very excited to discover The Old Guard 2 is all but officially announced. Based on the after credits, it made sense that it was coming, but nothing was confirmed. However, the website for the comics says about the second run of the comics (Forces Multiplied): "soon to be a major motion picture". So.... Excitement! The sooner they start working on the sequel, the better. 
> 
> And then do a "Tales through Time" spin-off as well. 
> 
> I'm greedy.


End file.
